George C. Scott's towering portrayal of the obsessive,
arrogant, colorful, heroic World War II general begins with his classic,
six-minute monologue about Americans and their fighting spirit. This was
the role and performance for which Scott was given an Academy Award that
he declined and refused to accept. The opening scene featuring the larger-than-life,
egotistical, much-decorated general is set before the backdrop of a huge
American flag. After the anthem concludes, he ends his salute and with
a cold, mean look, delivers his speech to offscreen troops, peppering
it with numerous profanities. He praises those who would fight, promising
potential glory for his soldiers:

"...Now I want you to remember that
no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making
the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. Men, all this stuff you've
heard about America not wanting to fight - wanting to stay out of the
war, is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All
real Americans love the sting of battle. When you were kids, you all admired
the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, big league ball players,
the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.
Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for
a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost and never
will lose a war, because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans.
Now, an army is a team - it lives, eats, sleeps, fights as a team. This
individuality stuff is a bunch of crap...

Now, we have the finest food
and equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. You know,
by god, I actually pity those poor bastards we're goin' up against. By
god, I do. We're not just gonna shoot the bastard, we're going to cut
out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.
We're going to murder those lousy Hun bastards by the bushel. Now, some
of you boys, I know, are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under
fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you will all do your
duty. The Nazis are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood, shoot
them in the belly. When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment
before was your best friend's face, you'll know what to do.

Now there's
another thing I want you to remember. I don't want to get any messages
saying that we are holding our position. We're not holding anything. Let
the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we're not interested
in holding onto anything except the enemy. We're going to hold onto him
by the nose and we're gonna kick him in the ass. We're going to kick the
hell out of him all the time and we're gonna go through him like crap
through a goose. Now, there's one thing that you men will be able to say
when you get back home, and you may thank god for it. Thirty years from
now when you're sitting around your fireside with your grandson on your
knee, and he asks you: 'What did you do in the Great World War II?', you
won't have to say: 'Well, I shoveled s--t in Louisiana.' All right, now
you sons-of-bitches, you know how I feel and I will be proud to lead you
wonderful guys into battle anytime, anywhere. That's all."

One of the most controversial of all of Kubrick's films
is his ultra-violent, over-indulgent, graphic film of the near future
- its sadistic scene of a rape coupled with song and dance from one of
Hollywood's most famous musicals is particularly sensational and perverse.

An ebullient young punker Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell),
wearing a bowler hat and one false eyelash (upper and lower), joins
with other teen-aged
"droogs" to engage in a night of sado-sexual escapades (beatings, pillaging,
mayhem, break-ins and rape). At the ultra-modern residence of the Alexanders
(Patrick Magee and Adrienne Corri), the elderly writer and his red pajama
suit-dressed wife are assaulted by the gang, now attired with grotesque
face masks.

Acting like Gene Kelly, Alex ironically punctuates his
rhythmic, soft-shoe kick-dance with the lyrics of "Singin' in the Rain" while assaulting
and kicking the husband in the belly as he is restrained and prostrate
on the floor, and slapping the wife. The rhythmic scene is one of the
most disturbing, conflicting scenes in the film, with its juxtaposition
of the familiar lyrics of playful music with images of brutality and horrible
ultra-violence.

Both victims and bound and gagged, with a rubber ball
painfully inserted into their mouths and wrapped with long strips of
Scotch tape around their heads. Alex overturns the writer's desk, typewriter,
and bookshelves. Mr. Alexander is forced to helplessly watch the ugly
rape of his wife, who is held upright by one of the other thugs. As
a prelude to the rape, Alex begins by snipping off two circles of cloth
around her breasts, and then slits her entire suit from bottom to top.

The multiple Academy Award-winning, fast-paced, realistic
police/crime film features the exciting, frenetic, car-and-elevated train
chase scene - one which has been endlessly copied in dozens of films -
it is a terrifying, staggering series of effectively intercut segments.

The vulgar, brutal, tireless, unlikable, maniacal and
sadistic Jimmy "Popeye"
Doyle (Gene Hackman) stars as the main undercover New York City narcotics
cop who passionately and obsessively pursues drug pushers.

In the film's
centerpiece, one of the drug ring's murderous snipers Pierre Nicoli (Marcel
Bozzuffi) nicknamed "Frog Two" muffs his attempt to kill Doyle, and is
pursued in an exciting and brilliant car-train chase sequence through
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. In one of the best pursuits ever put on film [rivaling
the producer's previous car-chase scene in the film Bullitt -
and the reason the film was awarded an Oscar for Best Editing], Doyle
flags down, commandeers, and hijacks a car (for a "police emergency") and pursues
the drug dealer on board an out-of-control, roaring, run-away elevated commuter
subway train (where he has terrorized passengers, forced the engineer
not to stop at the next station, killed the train's cop and conductor,
and caused the motorman to have a heart-attack).

The psychopathic detective
weaves and swerves in and out of traffic and track/girder supports at
top speed through the streets of New York below the scaffolding
of the elevated subway, barely missing a mother and baby carriage at
one point. He bangs his fists on the steering wheel, angered at the delays
and frustrations.

At the end of the chase after a climactic train crash
when the train smashes into another train [photographed with the train
moving away from the camera - and then reversed], Nicoli escapes
from the wreckage, believing that he is freed of Doyle. But Doyle guns
him down at the top of the train depot stairs - the image became the
famous promotional still used to advertise the film on posters.

A tale of four Atlanta businessmen
whose weekend canoe trip into the wilderness ends in disaster - one of
the film's highlights is in its opening.

One of the adventurers, Drew
(Ronny Cox), is strumming on his guitar as they are filling up at a gas
station in the mountains. He notices that a moon-faced, retarded albino
hillbilly kid (Billy Redden) on the porch has a banjo, and answers
him with a few notes and walks forward to sit on a porch swing. In
a captivating banjo duel, "Duelling Banjos," they are soon challenging each other in
a rousing duet. The boy smiles, and the mountain man/gas station attendant
does a lively jig to the music.

Drew confesses toward the end of their
piece that he has been beaten by the speed: "I'm lost." Afterwards, Drew
exclaims: "God damn, I could play all day with that guy," and he extends
his hand to the boy to congratulate him: "God damn, you play a mean banjo,"
but is evidently disappointed when the mute boy turns his head and refuses
to shake hands with him - a suspicious stranger.

Francis Ford Coppola's award-winning film is part of a
lush saga/trilogy that has earned its place in American culture as a modern-day
iconic film about violence, power, corruption, family loyalty, and revenge.
The Corleone crime "family" in Manhattan in the mid 1940s, is dominated
first by wise godfather/patriarch "Don" Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in
a tremendous, award-winning acting portrayal) - the head of one of the
five Italian-American "families" that operate a crime syndicate in New
York City.

In the long, opening scene of the film, Corleone is
in his home's dark office, regally and ruthlessly carrying on business
during his daughter Connie's (Talia Shire) wedding reception, held
in the bright, sunshiny outdoor veranda. It is the custom of the father
of the bride to grant favors to all petitioners and those who pay homage.
In the masterfully-photographed, underlit office, American justice
has failed. Ostensibly, the Don is a gentle, under-stated, restrained,
62 year old aging man, sitting behind his study's desk. His face has
a bulldog appearance with padded cheeks, and he speaks slowly with
a high-pitched, hoarse, raspy, gutteral mumbling accent. On his lap
is a cat whose head he lovingly and gently strokes. Although he moves
stiffly, he wields enormous lethal power as he determines the dispensation
of justice - who will be punished and who will be favored. He listens
to supplicants' requests for extra-legal help and determines how to
make offers that people can't refuse.

[An unforgettable short sequence
in the film is the one of the severed head of prized race horse Khartoum
in the silk-sheeted bed of a recalcitrant Hollywood film producer Jack
Woltz (John Marley).]

This controversial film is the sensational, tawdry, shocking
horror story about devil possession and the exorcism of the demonic spirits
from a young, innocent, twelve year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair). Ghastly
expressions of her possession were masterfully created with remarkable
special effects to manipulate audiences into feeling dread, nausea, and
fright.

At first, Regan's bed is racked with violent convulsions.
Flopping around on the top of the bed, the young girl frantically calls
out: "Make
it stop! Make it stop!" Her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) throws herself
on top of Regan on the wildly bucking bed which bounces up and down on
the floor- there is a cacophony of deafeningly loud, grating noises. Soon
after, Regan's hysterical despairing screams intensify and "things have
gotten worse...they've gotten violent." Regan's upper torso is violently
being whipped and thrown back and forth on the bed, battering her body
as it slams into the mattress. She screams: "Oh please, Mother, make it
stop! It's hurting." Then she is tossed upwards and bounces up and down.
Her uncontrollable seizures are accompanied by low gutteral growls, almost
animalistic. Her throat below her chin bubbles out.

When one of the doctors
reaches for Regan on the bed, she slaps him back-handed across the face,
knocking him into the door and onto the floor. Her physically-repulsive
voice warns: "Keep away! The sow is mine!" She pulls up the front of her
nightgown, masturbates by rubbing herself, and in a deep, strange voice,
beckons: "F--k me! F--k me!"

One of the film's most horrifying scenes
is the notorious crucifix-masturbation or stabbing scene. From upstairs
in Regan's bedroom, her mother hears grotesque sounds, crashes, and
screams. She runs up the stairs towards the door - it opens and she
sees 45 rpm records, books, and stuffed animals being hurled at the
tightly-closed window. The camera registers the horror on her face
as she sees her daughter's sacrilegious self-abuse. In an obscene gesture
simulating masturbation or a stabbing, a horribly-disfigured Regan
repeatedly thrusts her bloodied hand clutching the crucifix into her
vagina under her blood-splattered nightgown, as she bellows obscenities
in the Devil's voice: "Let Jesus
f--k you, let Jesus f--k you! Let him f--k you!"

When Chris grabs her
daughter's super-strong arm and tussles with her for control of the offending
object. Regan punches her mother with a violent blow, sending her backwards
across the bedroom floor. With her telekinetic power, Regan moves a
chair against the door to bar everyone's way, and she sends a tall
wooden bureau across the floor toward her mother.

As a bloody-faced
Regan sits on her bed, she spins her head backwards 180 degrees, threatening
and taunting in a deep malevolent voice as she imitates the British
accent of a recently-murdered friend of Chris': "Do you know what she did? Your c--ting daughter?"

In
the grossest scene of the film, as Father Karras (Jason Miller) approaches
closer, Regan lurches forward on the bed and spews bilious, pea-green
soup vomit from her mouth in a single projectile stream directly into
his face. The thick green slime sticks to his face and clothing. Vomit
also dribbles down onto Regan's nightgown.

The superb, private eye mystery and modern-day film
noir thriller from director Roman Polanski skillfully blends mystery,
romance, suspense, and elements of hard boiled detective film noirs. The
investigation of a routine story thought to be marital infidelity by
a 1930s Los Angeles private detective-hero J. J. (Jake) Gittes (Jack
Nicholson) uncovers secrets under many layers, facades, and networks
of deception.

One night, Jake drives to the Oak Pass Reservoir to further
investigate the scene of the discovery of a corpse, and to see whether
portions of the city's water supply are being dumped or secretly diverted.
After scaling the locked, chain-link fence with a 'No Trespassing' sign,
Gittes hears two shots of gunfire - a signal to open the water sluice.
Ignorantly believing he is a shooting target, he jumps into a run-off
channel for cover. The storm drain immediately fills with a torrent of
rushing water, slamming him into a barrier and almost claiming him as
the next drowning victim. Then, after climbing back over one fence in
his soggy clothes, he is threatened for trespassing by Claude Mulvihill
(Roy Jenson), the city's sheriff.

Gittes flippantly asks Claude: "Where'd
you get the midget?" referring to another hired thug dressed in a beige
suit, white shirt, spotted red and white bow-tie and Panama hat. The maniacal,
intimidating, knife-wielding hoodlum (director Roman Polanski in a minor
cameo role) wants to scare him off the case. Jake gets a warning to stop
snooping (nosing) around just before his nostril is viciously cut with
a knife:

"You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh? You know what happens
to nosy fellows? Huh, no? Want to guess? Huh, no? OK. They lose their
noses. (Jake's nose gushes blood after a sharp flick of the knife.) Next
time you lose the whole thing. Cut if off and feed it to my goldfish.
Understand?"

He sports a bloody-bandaged and stitched nose in the
next scene (a symbolic beacon of his trespassing into other people's
business) and an unraveling bandage for the rest of the film.

[In the film's ending
scene set in Chinatown - the only scene in the film which actually takes
place there, all the characters converge in a startling and despairing
climactic scene.]

A disturbing, tragi-comedic film that swept the major
Academy Awards in the year of its release - the film succeeded as a tale
of a wise-guy hero who rebels against institutional authority and attitudes
in a tyrannical mental hospital.

In one of the
film's many stunning scenes, the patronizing, parental Nurse disallows
the patients from watching the second game of the World Series - she
refuses to have the usually compliant and spiritless fellow patients/inmates
won over to the reasoning of McMurphy and changes the rules of voting
to defeat the proposal. Livid with anger, McMurphy wills the game into
existence - he pretends to be enjoying the baseball game on television
in a contest of wills with the Nurse. He re-creates the play-by-play
excitement of the game by the power of his imagination. His excitement
proves infectious and he galvanizes the other patients to join him,
cheer, and look up at the blank television screen - it reflects the
smiles on their faces when a fantasized ballplayer hits a home run.

The 1970s action-packed, crowd-pleasing,
feel-good story of the rise of a small-time Philadelphia boxer against
insurmountable odds.

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), a simple-minded
bum, is a 30-year-old Philadelphia club fighter who resorts to small
bouts, and serves as the strong-arm collections man for a local numbers
racket run by a local loan shark. When the unknown Rocky is chosen
to be boxing champ Apollo Creed's (Carl Weathers) opponent for the
January 1st event, a world heavyweight title fight, it is a once-in-a-lifetime
boxing bout opportunity.

In the most memorable sequence of the film, a montage,
Rocky undergoes grueling training from Thanksgiving to New Years by
doing one-armed pushups, pounding hanging slabs of raw meat in a slaughterhouse
freezer where his buddy Paulie (Burt Young) works, and making a run
through the Philadelphia streets and up the steps of the art museum,
hands triumphantly raised in the air, accompanied by the rousing song, "Gonna Fly Now" (by Bill
Conti).

Although his first run up the endless steps is exhausting,
his last run is effortless.

Martin Scorsese's masterpiece depicted one man's descent
into insanity, alienation, and cathartic violence within the nauseating,
squalid landscape of New York City.

Cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro),
an enigmatic, 20th century loner has a disastrous date with a pretty
blonde political worker for the Palantine campaign named Betsy (Cybill
Shepherd). Projecting his anger, bare-chested Travis has attached guns
to himself (first one - and then two shoulder holsters and a third
gun from behind) in his squalid apartment. He practices drawing the
guns in front of a mirror.

Turning more alienated and violent and harnessing
his puritanical energy, he manufactures a custom-made fast-draw, gliding
mechanism that he attaches to his forearm, and another concealed knife-holder
for a horrible-looking combat knife on his ankle. The weapons and other
spring-loaded, metal gadgets attached to him are extensions of his
body - his gunmanship is astonishing.

In the most terrifying, but classic
sequence in the film, he glares at himself in the mirror and recites
conversations in which he threatens and insistently challenges imaginary
enemies, rehearsing his quick-draw with his spring-loaded holster:

"Huh? Huh? I'm faster than
you, you f--kin' son of a...I saw you comin'. F--k. S--t-heel. I'm standin'
here. You make the move. You make the move. It's your move. (He draws
his gun from his concealed forearm holster.) Don't try it, you f--ker.
You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? (He turns around
to look behind him.) Well, who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin'
to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the f--k do you think you're talkin'
to? Oh yeah? Huh? OK. (He whips out his gun again.) Huh?"

# 95. Saturday Night Fever (1977)

No other film best captured the disco craze of the 70s
generation than this John Badham film and its image of actor/dancer John
Travolta. Cocky young Brooklyn paint store clerk Tony Manero (John Travolta),
a wanna-be Broadway dancer, escapes each weekend to the local disco dance
floor of 2001 Odyssey. In a tight white leisure suit, bodyshirt, tight
pants and black platform shoes, the sleek and graceful disco king struts
his stuff on a pulsating, colorful dance floor - his arm pointed in the
air - to the rockin' music of the Bee Gees.

[Seventeen years later, Travolta again showcases his
dance talent in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp
Fiction (1994). As hitman
Vincent Vega, he nervously entertains underworld boss' wife Mia Wallace
(Uma Thurman) at a retro 50's style diner/club called Jack Rabbit
Slim's - the wait staff is composed of dead 1950s icons like Marilyn
Monroe, Buddy Holly, and James Dean. They enter the restaurant's
hip-swiveling dance contest, frugging and ponying a marvelous composite
of faddish dances from the faded era, including the Batusi from the
mid-to-late 60s Batman TV show, to the tune of Chuck Berry's "You
Never Can Tell." The dance's
trademark action was moving the index and middle finger-spread open in
a "V" shape-across the face as to make a mask over the
eyes.]

At the start of the film's
most memorable, greatest set of sequences, Willard (Martin Sheen) seeks
the captain in charge of the bloody attack on the Viet Cong. He encounters
the commanding officer of the Air Cavalry - a hawkish, lunatic, flamboyant
Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall), wearing a black horse
soldier's Stetson cavalry hat (a la George A. Custer) with a cavalry
sword emblem, sunglasses, and a yellow dickey. To secure a Vietcong
beachhead at a N. Vietnamese village because it is one of the Vietcong's
best surfing areas in "Charlie's" territory, Kilgore orders a massive helicopter air
attack on an unsuspecting, seemingly innocent, quiet, peaceful Vietnamese
village the next dawn after a trumpet cavalry charge is sounded on a bugle.

The armada of choppers glide silently through the breaking
light like a harmless flock of birds - it is one of the film's most
impressive, memorable sequences. The crazed Kilgore has ordered the
music: "We'll come in low
out of the rising sun, and about a mile out, we'll put on the music...Yeah,
use Wagner. Scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it." Chef
reflexively imitates other soldiers by removing his helmet and sitting
on it - to avoid having his "balls blown off." Kilgore commands: "Shall
we dance?" as the music is piped out from the swarm of helicopters - the
front of his copter is painted with the motto adorned with crossed swords:
"Death from Above." The choppers become menacing as rockets and gunfire
spew out along with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blasting over
the helicopter-mounted loudspeakers to scare the enemy. Surfboards are
loaded on the side of the command helicopter.

Later, after the devastating,
pyrotechnic attack, with the jungle leveled and engulfed in flames behind
him, Kilgore smells the napalm, squats on the beach, and exclaims in
a now-famous line of dialogue:

"You smell that? Do you smell that?...Napalm,
son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm
in the morning."

Stanley Kubrick's homage to the horror genre was illustrated
in his adaptation of Stephen King's novel.

Aspiring writer Jack Torrance
(Jack Nicholson) is hired to be the off-season caretaker with his family
of the Overlook Hotel, a snow-bound Colorado resort. The effects of
isolation, the hotel's disturbing, murderous history, and other familial
pressures lead to the corrupting and possession of Jack's soul. With
a crazed, homicidal, ferocious temper, he pursues his wife Wendy (Shelley
Duvall) with a long-handled axe to their apartment's front door: "Wendy, I'm home."

Both Danny (Danny
Lloyd), his young son and Wendy retreat to the bathroom. Danny escapes
and slides down a giant drift of snow resting next to their bathroom
window, but Wendy is unable to fit through the ice-jammed window's
narrow passageway. As Jack stalks her into the bathroom, he lurches
after her with a loathsome, macabre sense of humor, envisioning them
in a bizarre, tragic-comic fairytale in which he is the 'big bad wolf':

He smashes his way into the bathroom
door, with each stroke of the blade jutting through the wood, as his
screaming wife watches his progress with her butcher knife poised to
strike. He peers through the broken slats with an evil grin and perversely
exclaims:

A spectacular, cliff-hanger, breathlessly-paced,
non-stop action/adventure film of the early 1980s that was an immensely
successful summer box-office hit that mimicked the great 1930's adventure
serials. The opening sequence which begins under the credits is a hang-on-to-your-seats
experience.

In 1936, American expedition leader Dr. Indiana "Indy" Jones
(Harrison Ford), sporting his signature short, brown leather flight jacket,
a brimmed felt fedora, and a bullwhip firmly in his hand is in a South
American rainforest jungle making his way to a cave entrance that conceals
a temple. Deep inside the cave is an altar where the coveted object of
Indy's mission is located - a tiny, gold jeweled figurine or statuette
artifact - a disembodied head.

At the start of a memorable sequence, Indy
reaches the altar where the idol looks both fierce and beautiful. From
inside his jacket, he removes a small, canvas drawstring bag filled
with sand, bouncing it in his hand to estimate the approximate weight
of the idol and rubbing his chin. With tremendous concentration, he
twitches his fingers (the guide Satipo twitches his fingers also) and
then deftly and smoothly replaces the idol with the sand-filled bag
to avoid triggering another booby trap. For a few moments, all seems
well, until the pedestal beneath the bag suddenly begins to sink into
the altar stone.

Indy has miscalculated the weight in the swap, setting
off a loud chain reaction of destruction after pilfering the sacred
object. The entire sanctuary rumbles and shakes and rocks fall loose
from the collapsing walls, as Indy spins and runs through a tiled floor
area, setting off a noisy torrent of poisonous darts and arrows.

As
he hurriedly departs through the perilous cave, he turns toward a loud
rumbling noise and sees behind him a huge, thundering boulder, tumbling,
roaring and rolling in his direction - perfectly sized to fit the passageway.

Indy dashes just ahead of the destructive, crushing boulder,
leaping to safety outside the cave, as the giant rock slams into the
entrance of the cave, sealing it perfectly, but then faces another
frantic chase to his water-plane to escape from natives.

In the justly-famous restaurant-deli scene, two long-time
acquaintances grapple with the difficulties of relationships.

Commitment-shy
Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) describes how he can "just get up
out of bed and leave" after sex by any number of fake excuses: "I
say I have an early meeting, an early haircut, an early squash game." Blonde,
clean-living Sally Albright (Meg Ryan) is affronted by his insensitivity
and sexist attitudes: "You know, I am so glad I never got involved
with you...You are a human affront to all women. And I am a woman." Harry
confidently believes his sexual prowess satisfies his female partners
and brings them to orgasm, until Sally explains how "most women,
at one time or another, have faked it."

Harry doesn't believe that he has been fooled because
he can tell the difference between a real and a faked orgasm. Sally
looks at Harry seductively, and begins to illustrate, in the middle
of the busy restaurant, how easily women can convincingly fake an orgasm.
With a loud and long display of groans, gasps, hair rufflings, caresses,
table poundings, and ecstatic releases, she yells: "Yes, Yes, YES! YES! YES!" The entire
restaurant quiets down and is attentive to her realistic act. When she
is finished with her demonstration, she calmly picks up her fork and resumes
eating.

This is followed by the film's funniest line, delivered
by another customer (Estelle Reiner - director Rob Reiner's mother)
who tells the waitress, "I'll have what she's having" - referring to the meal ordered
by Sally.

Steven Spielberg's unanimously-praised historical epic
presents an uncompromising view of the Holocaust. In the midst of a dark,
frightening period during World War II, when Jews in Nazi-occupied Krakow
were first dispossessed of their businesses and homes, then placed in
ghettos and forced labor camps in Plaszow, and finally resettled in concentration
camps for execution, one man - Oskar Schindler - an enterprising Nazi
German industrialist/opportunist, first exploited Jewish/Polish workers
in a successful enamelware factory and eventually rescued more than one
thousand of them from certain death.

In one of the film's most stunning
images, the keys of his accountant/business manager Itzhak Stern's (Ben
Kingsley) typewriter are magnified as they crisply rap out names to
create a list of the individuals who will be saved from extinction
from the Nazi war machine by being bought for employment - they are Schindler's List:
Dresner, Wein, Rosner, Poldek Pfefferberg, Mila Pfefferberg, Stagel,
Scharf,
"all the children," Lewartow, and more.

Names and lists are two of the
film's major visual motifs. The list grows from four hundred, to six
hundred, to eight hundred, to almost 1,100 individuals. When the list
nears completion, Stern comments: "The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around
its margins lies the gulf."

[Another remarkable sequence: the liquidation
of the ghetto and of the Jews in Krakow by Untersturmfuhrer Amon Goeth
(Ralph Fiennes) and his commandos, and the final modern day epilogue-segment
of Schindler's Jewish survivors lined up on a hillside.]

A collection of the 100 most famous, unforgettable or
memorable images, scenes, sequences or performances in films of the
20th century.